The Basics

A “case study” in the context of marketing is an analysis of a project, campaign or company that identifies a situation, recommended solutions, implementation actions, and identification of those factors that contributed to failure or success.

As the aforementioned stats illustrate, marketing case studies are important because they help you sell your company’s product. They validate the statements your company makes about your product, and allow potential buyers to see your product in action.This blog post will help you secure and create a case study that sets your company apart from its competitors.

Here’s what you need to do to secure a case study.

Steps for Getting a Marketing Case Study

The first (and often hardest) part of creating a marketing case study is getting a customer to agree to one. No doubt many customers are pleased with your product. But it’s no small thing for them to take time out of their busy schedule to talk about how awesome the product or service they’re paying for is.Many larger companies also have formalized rules around providing testimonials. This can extend the process of getting a case study, as they have to go through legal, senior management, and more, just to get approval.Increase your case study prospects. Create a formalized process that ensures you get the case studies you need on a regular basis.

Meet with customer success, sales, and marketing to get them on board with creating regular case studies. From this meeting, create a formal document that outlines how to submit marketing case study opportunities, the frequency that customer success are expected to do so, and the process/time commitment involved after a client has agreed to participate. Include a case study request email template to save customer success time. Consider these sample templates:

Including It in the Contract

Some companies choose to include a customer testimonial or case study commitment in part of their purchase agreement. This is a great way to guarantee you’ll have case studies in the pipeline. It’s also a conflict of interest, and some would argue flirts the line of ethical behavior. By including case studies in a contract, you’re essentially paying for testimonials.You want to publish only truly impressive, stand-out marketing case studies. Customers who are doing so well with your product that you’d want to make a case study from their experience are likely to be happy to help. Customers who need a contract to be forced into a case study aren’t often the ones you want as a face for your brand.

Gather Information for Your Marketing Case Study

After a customer agrees to do a case study, take the following steps to ensure the process goes smoothly.

Send an Email

It should introduce you if you haven’t already. Confirm the date and time for your first phone call or in-person meeting. Address the time commitment of the case study, and include the questions you plan on asking.

With customer testimonials the person you’re interviewing needs to have well-spoken and thought out responses about your product. Here are some sample questions you could ask:

How did you find out about our company?

What made you start looking for our solution?

Which other products did you look at before deciding on ours?

Why did you choose our solution above others?

How has using our solution been so far? Tell us about your experiences and what you’ve done with it?

How has our product benefitted you and your team?

What results have you seen with our solution so far?

What do you hope to do with our product moving forward?

Interview

Next, conduct the interview. Whether it’s in person or over the phone, make sure to record the interview for transcription later. Make sure to inform them that you’re recording them. Aside from being common courtesy, it’s also illegal in some states to record someone without their consent. As you’re interviewing, make note of any especially interesting points, as well as numerical results.

Take Pictures and Record Video

If you’re conducting an interview onsite, take pictures and video. If not, ask your customer to send some over. The more visual your marketing case study is, the better. According to Animoto, four times as many consumers would prefer towatch a video about a productthan to read about it.

Transcribe

Transcribe and fact check the interview. Try using a service website likeFiverrfor quick transcription that won’t break the bank.

Gather Data

Find out information about the company and their results with your product outside of the interview. Ask if you can see their results or look into their reporting for numerical information to back up the information in the interview. If they don’t have this information, look internally for more general stats on your product’s impact on the people that use it.

Find a Story, Start Writing

Once you have all the data you need, start pulling together your copy, video, and images into a shareable document. Use the marketing case study template below to create a first-class case study.

Marketing Case Study Template

Title

Too many companies title their case studies things like “[insert company name here] Case Study.” This is both boring and uninformative. Use the case study title to help potential readers decide if it’s something that applies to them. Include a description of the company and some of their results. E.g. “Case Study: How CS2 Compliance Is Succeeding With Curata Content Curation Software”

Subtitle

The subtitle should round out the reader’s expectations of what’s in the study. Include more numerical improvements, or an overview of what happened. E.g. “Creating and Growing an Excited Community in a Highly-Regulated, Niche Market”

Their Company Overview

We recommend pulling the company overview directly from the company’s website. It should be two or three sentences and highlight parts of the company most important to your audience. If you’re looking to highlight the company size, mention it here.

Your Company Overview

It’s okay to use a boilerplate description here. However, if there is something else that might be beneficial to include in this particular use-case—add it. If you have more than one product description in your boilerplate description, focus on the product the marketing case study focuses on.

Introduction

The introduction should present the company you’re talking about and their problem. Here’s an example:

CS2 Compliance, a regulatory consulting firm for financial services clients, wanted to build a community for its clients and save time answering regulation-specific questions in individual emails. They wanted a solution that made content creation easier, found topical subjects in their industry, and enabled them to quickly publish to their website and newsletter.

Solution

The next section should introduce your product and why your customer went with you. Example:

Action

This should describe how your product or service was implemented and how it made the overall process smoother, easier, cheaper, etc. Example:

CS2 uses Curata CCS to curate articles that answer a variety of FAQs, building a robust content program including discussion boards, webinars, and frequent newsletters. This has led to strategic and streamlined website content and newsletter publication for CS2.

Results

Finally, show the results. They support the statement that this company was successful with your product. If you have further information about how customers perform with your product, include it here. Include how your client is planning on using your product in the future to grow and expand their goals. Example:

Newsletters now have an open rate of 42.52 percent, and a click-through rate of 23.11 percent, both significantly above industry averages. With Curata, CS2 exceeded community registration goals by over 60 percent. CS2 is now using Curata to expand their reach and create custom experiences for each sub-audience within their online community.

Pull Quotes

CS2 co-founder and president Mary Harris King had this to say about Curata: “Curata keeps our current clients up-to-date with interesting articles while integrating with our public facing website so potential clients can see our newsfeeds, and sign up for the daily news digest, etc. It’s a great way to reach both audiences.”

Statistics

Case studies are a compelling way to convince prospects to buy your product. They’re even more compelling when your claims are supported by data and hard information. Use company information and stats, outside numbers, and numbers from your customer to round out your marketing case study. Writing on how curation improves content marketing ROI? Include a stat from a trusted source. Example:

Conclusion

Many case studies include a conclusion at the end wrapping up all the details. Instead, try a big, colorful CTA. While a conclusion is nice, making sure the reader doesn’t have to consume more than they need is even better. If your marketing case study is very long, include the most important points at the beginning in bullets.

Distribute and Promote Your Marketing Case Study

Case studies are effective on your website and as a sales enablement tool. They should also be sent to your sales team. Include a description of what it’s about and the situations it should be most effective for.

Other ways to maximize the impact of a case study include:

Place it on your home page

Send an email sharing it with the case study’s target audience, or as part of your newsletter

Write a supplemental blog post to drive traffic to the case study. Focus on the problem solved in the case study and write an informational post on that topic

Add the case study to relevant landing pages

Add it to you or your coworkers’ signatures

Insert it into a slideshow or longer presentation on product use cases

Share the case study on social media

Examples of Awesome Marketing Case Studies

For more information, check out some standout case studies by other companies.

Bitly

Bitly’s case studyis notable for a couple of reasons. First, their decision to use a slide deck over a single page document. It’s easy to digest and different enough that it piques the reader’s interest. The layout is sleek and skimmable with easy takeaways. Bitly includes images and a colorful layout that’s more interesting than a traditional, text-heavy marketing case study.

Kantar Media Division Cymphony

Kantar media created acase study videoof their work for Samsung. For a service-based product, this form of marketing case study proved extremely effective. Kantar describe their process, their findings, and their results in a quick, story-heavy video.

Zendesk

Zendeskinclude customer testimonials in a visually appealing multimedia library on their website. This allows visitors to search by use case, industry, and company size to find the most relevant story to them.

Marketing case studies can be hugely effective. They provide proof of concept to potential buyers, and drive your audience further down the funnel. They can also serve as a powerful sales enablement tool. For more on how to drive your audience further down the funnel and measure your content’s efficacy, read Curata’s eBook:Content Marketing Metrics: Account Based Marketing Edition.